The Evil Dead

The Evil Dead might have been an unexpected film to watch on Christmas day, but we went ahead and did it anyway. In some flippant way, zombies actually fit rather nicely into the Christmas tradition. Okay, so maybe Dawn of the Dead (in which humanity makes its last stand in a shopping mall) would have been slightly more appropriate. But that's not the movie my sister got for Christmas.



What surprised me a little bit about this film is how basic the plot is. Although, Sam Raimi may have set the archetype for this type of isolation-bad-things-ensue horror movie, I'm not sure about that. Certainly, he was one of the first to achieve something this formally brilliant with such a tiny budget (in the area of 300,000 dollars, I believe). The plot is this: a group of five young people set off to spend the weekend in a cabin together (But how did they get it so cheap, anyway?). Upon getting there, they accidentally arouse the spirits of the dead, who inhabit and kill them each in turn, barring their exit by knocking down the one rickety bridge that would allow their egress. That's pretty much all there is to it, but Raimi's use of the camera and his ability to create tension make this film amazing and incredibly frightening, even to a Saw-jaded viewer, such as myself. This film might even be a precursor to gross-out horror, as the one way to get rid of the zombies is by total dismemberment, which we get to witness every part of!


The gender politics are strange, as well. It is a mistake that the first girl to fall prey to possession by the evil spirits is the one girl who came without a boyfriend? I think not. She is essentially raped by the forest, and soon becomes rampantly possessed. Ironically, she is the last zombie standing in the end, and the one that almost does Ashley (Bruce Campbell) in. The next two to succumb are the girlfriends of the two men. In various ways, each are inevitably destroyed by their boyfriends. In some fierce perversion of the femme fatale, the women in this movie become the evil force that must be overcome. And this can only be achieved by total, grotesque bodily annihilation.

If you as unnerved as I was at the end of this movie, watch the outtakes. Taken out of context, the scenes of goop and growling are hilarious. Stripped of the veneer created by editing, the constituent scenes of this movie really reveal its shoestring budget. This just makes it seem all the more amazing that Raimi managed to create the horror masterpiece that he did.

Miscellaney

A few nights ago after coming home from a long day at work, I was pleased to discover that it is Humphrey Bogart month on TCM. I caught the end of The Maltese Falcon, which was followed by Casablanca. Besides Bogie, these films share a few cast other members, including Peter Lorre and Sydney Greenstreet, who, like Bogie, pretty much reprise their former roles.

I'm ashamed to admit it, but this was the first time I had ever seen Casablanca in its entirety. It was strange to watch a film that was new to me, and yet so familiar. Before I even knew what it was, I had already seen it parodied countless times on shows like Boy Meets World and the Animaniacs.

Of course, the iconic love story element is incredibly touching, but I also like how much of the plot involves crooked politics and law enforcement. The only way to survive in Casablanca is to adopt a certain flexibility when it comes to the law. Of course, if you do this too unethically, you are punished by the Gods of Cinema (as Terry Gilliam might say), which is why Peter Lorre's character disappears so early on. Rick is guided by ethics, though he deflects any suspicions of his soft spots with a hard-boiled exterior.

I also found it amusing how effeminate most of the foreigners are, especially in contrast with Humphrey Bogart's archetypal, brusquely independent American male. I couldn't help flinching a little bit when Ilsa tells Rick that he should do the thinking for both of them, because she is too overcome with emotion to be reasonable.


Although I probably won't properly write about them on here, I recently saw Antichrist and the Road, both of which are very much worth seeing, in my opinion. Although, the former requires a strong stomach. While it was done well enough, I don't really see that a film version of The Road was necessary, or that the screen adaptation presented anything new or insightful.

The Fisher King

In The Fisher King, Gilliam sets his manic protagonists loose against the backdrop of New York City. Although somewhat less stylistic than Brazil, The Fisher King retains a similar mood at certain points. As in Brazil, Gilliam makes the city come gruesomely alive, showing an underbelly teeming with malcontents, depressives and basket cases. Jeff Bridges' Jack Lucas becomes entangled with these people and discovers that he is not any more sane than they are underneath his sardonic veneer. Though desperate, they live by their impulses, outside the constraints of New York society.

What I sort of like about this film is that underneath all the elements that make it definitively Gilliam, it is a pretty recognizable narrative about redemption, with elements of romantic comedy thrown in. There is also some cosmic, religious subtext. Gilliam manages to warp a fairly conventional genre until it is unrecognizable, and completely enthralling. It doesn't hurt that the film is supported by incredible performances.

Jack begins the film as a powerful and privileged radio personality. As such, he is totally distanced from the people who call into his show, as well as everyone else. In his studio, the camera gazes on him bleakly from the top of a dark room, where he sits isolated in the darkness. When his ironic advice leads to a devastating act of violence, he plummets from his insulated world into the banal workaday life occupied by everyone else, including his girlfriend Anne (Mercedes Ruehl). Once he really hits rock bottom, he gets overly intoxicated and ends up encircled by a banshee circus of homeless men. The point of view camera has a surreal effect, allowing Jack to briefly access a piece of the alternate world that these people occupy. There he meets Parry, a man who believes himself to be a knight on a mission to retrieve the Holy Grail from Manhattan.

Still wracked with guilt, Jack finds himself using Parry to exculpate himself. At this outset, this seems to be more of a selfish motive than anything else, but gradually, he develops true feelings for Parry, whose somewhat vacant faculties provide him with a childlike benevolence. Jack begins by offering Parry some money, and eventually progresses to intervening in his love life, aiding him in landing the girl he has loved from afar (Amanda Plummer). Still, Gilliam doesn't make it that easy for his characters. While Jack is endeavoring to help Parry however he can, he nearly abandons Anne. As soon as he has done what he can for Parry, alleviating himself of the burden of his guilt, he decides to leave her.

There are many obvious similarities to Brazil, particularly Parry's (Robin Williams) vivid nightmare hallucinations of a fiery red knight--a figment that has replaced the devastating memories of his past. There is a chilling scene when these repressed memories suddenly return. Parry and the audience are confronted with full force as memory, nightmare and reality are interwoven into a cacophonous barrage of imagery.

This film is guided by the negotiation between fate and entropy, but it touches on so many different ideas that it is kind of hard to pick just one. It is an outlandish film with an outlandish plot, but Gilliam keeps it grounded in reality, perhaps through his assertion that insanity is latent within all of us, just a little below the surface. The most convincing characters in this film are the ones that shed their exteriors and play out their wildness.